


Whatever It Takes For Your Greatest Creation

by LlibLo



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Feels, Gen, Good to watch after the awesomeness that is endgame, Happy, I am Iron Man, I had to write this after End Game, One Shot, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-28 19:53:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18763090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LlibLo/pseuds/LlibLo
Summary: It's the end of the war, the final battle against Thanos.Tony is glad to see his nightmare end.[End Game alternate ending one shot. I promise you'll want this after seeing the movie]





	1. Chapter 1

_Whatever it takes_.

That’s what they had to do.

They’re mission took them across space and time.

Galaxies, decades.

Whatever it took.

With the infinity gauntlet in hand Tony Stark snapped.

The pain was worse than anything he’d felt before, like molten iron searing every nerve in his body. The overwhelming thunder of war that surrounded him vanished the moment he snapped, but he was able to watch in satisfaction as the titan in front of him held the horrified expression of defeat. Soon he got to see the devil that haunted his dreams turn to dust, but it wasn’t long after that did the pain start to consume him and the deafening silence rang in his ears.

First Rhodey caught him before he fell but then suddenly Peter was there. He was speaking but he couldn’t understand what was said, judging by his lips he he might have been saying  _“We won.”_

Relief couldn’t describe how he felt.

Then he saw Pepper, and through her matching features, his daughter. No amount of pain could pull his eyes away from them. He wanted to cry, he wanted to reach for them, but his failing body could only hold her hand for the short moments he had left.

And now he wanted to laugh.

Because of course Strange knew the only way to to get that  _one_  chance, Tony would have to die.

This was it.

He could feel the seconds stretch as he faded, two things remained in his mind.

His father, but most importantly, his daughter.

Just like his father said to him, Tony couldn’t help but think the same way about her. She was his greatest creation but he would forever regret not seeing her grow into the brilliant, amazing woman he knew she could be. But let's be honest, she could have dreams of becoming a hobo and he'd still support her.

It was getting difficult focus. It was like he was falling into darkness and there was no controlling it, it was his fear of the empty black space that kept him holding on those few seconds more. Eventually the pull was too strong.

He lost sight of Pepper, but Morgan’s image stayed strong in his mind.

Tony wished he could see her just one last time.

-

_It seemed the universe was inclined to comply._

-

_“So I thought I better record a little greeting, you know, in case of an untimely death on my part. I mean, not that death at any time isn’t untimely._

_This time travel thing we’re going to pull off tomorrow, its-its got me scratching my head about the survivability. Then again that’s the hero's gig. Part of the journey is the end…_

_What am I even trippin’ for? Everything is going to work out exactly the way it’s supposed to._

_I love you 3000”_

Tony said as he knelt down to look at Morgan.

But he froze for a moment as he realized what he was doing.

Hadn't he already done this? But Morgan wasn’t there when he recorded the message, neither were any of the other avengers who he noticed were dressed in black.

This was the message he recorded to Morgan in case he didn’t make it.

And now that he was actually looking, this reminded him of a funeral. Was it his?

Before he could react everything went black again.

When he finally saw light again he could tell there was a passage of time.

He panicked. He couldn’t feel his body, he couldn’t feel anything for that matter, he couldn't even hear, there was nothing but white. It didn’t matter how hard he tried or what he did, it felt like his eyes were both opened and closed. His hearing didn’t ring in the usual way in deafening silence it was just… nothing.

Was this the hell everyone talked of? Or worse, heaven? Nothing but a void of light in all directions, left with just your thoughts and memories for the rest of eternity as you fall in and out of insanity so constantly that you start to use them as a time measurements?

Before he could fall into his first cycle of madness that he was already inventing names for his eventual measurements, something flickered into view out of the corner of his eye. Or more accurately, one of his eyes, the other was still completely occupied by the void of light. He instinctively tried to face what he could tell was an image forming, there was no movement on his part, but what he now realized was a camera shifted in the direction he tried to move.

_‘Ok, maybe this wasn’t the after life. Either that or it_ _is_ _and i just have the ability to view humanity through… CCTV feed? If that was true what did my ancestors look through to watch humanity?’_

After a moment of focus he was able clear the image.

He wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking at, there was a couple of horizontal metal beams that ran parallel to each other. The same reaction that caused him to squint his eyes to see better caused the image to zoom in, at the same time he noticed something change in the void of light.

He shifted his attention to figure out exactly what it was despite the view in one eye still completely obscured by the camera feed.

He knew something was changed, he could just feel it, literally. Somewhere in his mind he could feel the change that happened, was it connected to the camera?

He relaxed his control on the camera and it zoomed out, but there it was again! The change.

He started to adjust the camera focus when he finally figured it out!

**[video_feed;#0021:zoom >set=60%]**

And explosion of realization occurred to him as he stared out into void of light. He was wrong before, it wasn’t light, or and endless void.

It was code.

Thousands and Thousands, maybe millions of lines of code running across all of the existence around him. But the most shocking thing of it all… it was  _him._

The entity of Tony Stark was written out into code, the entire program was pieced together and designed in a way he had never seen before.

No.

That wasn’t true.

There was one other place he had seen code structured like this.

Ultron.

_‘That’s impossible, how was my consciousness recreated as an AI?!’_

**“As clever as always, sir.”**

Tony jumped at the words and turned to face the voice. He hadn’t even realized the void was replaced with a vast sky that reflected a foreign sunset. He could feel his body again, and looked down in shock to see it. The water he stood in reflected his face back at him. It was unchanged compared to the last time he looked in the mirror, he was surprised to see the damage from the battle was non-existent, he couldn’t even spot scaring.

After a moment of bewildered staring, he quickly looked up and around to find an empty archway, having nothing else to do, he walked cautiously towards it.

He hesitated before taking a step out of the water onto the smooth stone of the curious structure, he reached out a hand to touch one of the pillars when the same voice startled him again.

“Sir?”

This time when he turned to face it, he was more than surprised to see Vision standing in the water. His posture as proper as always and his hands were behind his back, but he wore a black suit instead of the usual green getup and his skin was a metallic gray instead of the red. The mind stone was no longer placed on his forehead.

Tony just watched him before speaking, “Vision?”

“No, sir.”

Strange, Vision only ever referred to him as Mr. Stark. That only meant..

“Jarvis?” He asked in shock, his eye widened as he looked at the other.

“Of sorts, yes,” His computer butler who was now apparently personified, respond.

“How? You where- you were  _destroyed_ during the creation of Vision. How are you here- No, better question: Where the hell are we?! What’s going on? How was I just- just  _code!?”_

“To put it simply, you died,” His expression looked sad when he said that. “The human body is too weak to withstand the energy outburst caused by the activation of the Infinity Stones. Regrettably, it failed.”

“Yeah, I got that part… didn’t expect to survive,” Tony looked down at the water, but he noticed Jarvis didn’t have a reflection, he was about to question it when Jarvis spoke again.

“We granted your request, to see your daughter,” Jarvis continued.

“We?” Tony asked tilting his head.

“The singularities.”

“So, you’re not actually Jarvis?”

“It’s complicated, sir,” Jarvis sighed.

“Right, yeah, of course it’s complicated. When are things not complicated?” Tony said sarcastically as he waved his hands, “Things are just always  _so_ complicated. Can’t you at least try to-”

“The request costed you your soul.”

Tony went quiet.  _His soul?_ Was that really what it costed him to see his daughters face one last time? His eyes drifted away from Vision as he looked off at the endless horizon that surrounded the archway. All was deathly silent because he eventually spoke again, “... It was a fair trade,” Tony said quietly. At least he got to see Morgan before he disappeared into nothing. “So is this it? Is this where I go?”

“You misunderstood, sir. We’ve granted you request to see your daughter grow up. It may have cost you one soul we have giving you another. As you’ve already noticed it’s more... artificial than the last.”

“You just hand souls out like coupons now?”

“It’s complicated, sir.”

“Of course it is,” Tony sighed.

Without even realizing it Tony was back in the white void of code. It was oddly comforting compared to the unknown space he inhabited moments ago.

_‘Right, so I’m an AI now… I can work with this, but I need to figure out where I am first.’_

He focused on the one thing that he had access too, the video feed. There was a familiarity he couldn’t quite place, he had definitely seen this before, but  _where_  was the question.

No, he’s gotta stop thinking like a human. He’s essentially a computer, he’s full of code and somewhere there should be an access point to information without playing detective on a single camera feed.

After some testing and exploring of his new coded existence he could determine what was him and what was not. He found very familiar programs during his search, so familiar in fact  _he_ was the author of it.

He was in his old lab, or at least the underground part that was left of his Malibu home.

No wonder the video looked familiar, it was a sideways image of one of the docking ports for his original Iron Legion. The camera must have fallen during the attack on the house, leaving the image at an odd angle.

Checking the system he was surprised to find a single suit still connected. All the Iron Man suits should have been deployed and destroyed during the house party protocol. It was weak and the signal constantly flickered from active to inactive. That must have been why he didn’t know about it sooner, the flicker was so brief that it would have show up on any interface as disconnected. He was almost amused to see that the suit was none other than the Mark II. It was Rhodey’s first War Machine and Tony’s first Iron Man… maybe it could also be Tony’s first body? Because no way was he going to be an AI floating in cyberspace. He needed something to interact with the world.

He was restricted by coding and could only affect the system. The hardware was over a decade old but it was Stark tech, and it was built to last. The only issue was the damage the suit sustained, but with the flickering signal it was still powered so that was good.

He adjusted a few settings and optimized the transmitters as much as he could, its focus solely on the MkII. He finally got the signal strong enough to communicate with the suit. Weapons, repulsors, and the flight system were all offline, but there was a backup receiver that was undamaged.

The plan was to transfer himself into the suit. The only tricky part was to hope the connection stayed solid through the entire process.

If the connection was lost anytime during the transfer… it might kill him for good this time but there was no other option since his current location didn’t allow him to connect to anything other than the suit. If he wanted to see Morgan again, he had to try. He could only hope it would be successful.

**[Network Connected >Ironman_MkII**

**…**

**Connection Stability 65%]**

_‘Right, here goes nothing.’_

**[Initiating Transfer**

**Download… 15%**

**!CONNECTION STABILITY DEGRADING; 58%!**

_‘Dammit…’_

**Download...43%**

**!CONNECTION DEGRADING; 48%!**

**Download… 57%**

_‘Come on! Hang in there..’_

**!CONNECTION DEGRADING; 32%!**

**Download… 72%**

**!CONNECTION DEGRADING; 24%!**

**Download… 84%**

**!CONNECTION DEGRADING; 16%!**

**Download… 90%**

**!CONNECTION DEGRADING; 3%!**

**Download… 99%**

**!CONNECTION DEGRADING; 1%!**

_‘Just a little mor-’_

**Connection Lost…]**


	2. Chapter 2

Morgan Stark grew up hearing stories of how her father was a hero.

He fought against the Chitauri in the Battle of New York where ended the fight by flying a nuke into the portal, he almost didn’t make it through as Black Widow closed the portal.

He survived countless attacks from men wanting to destroy the world, one of those included a fire breathing man, at least that’s what her mother told her.

Uncle Thor visited rarely, but when he did he’d occasionally tell of the epic final battle of Iron Man. Morgan’s mother never liked her hearing about that one. About the titan named Thanos who they had to kill twice. She already knew about that from school, but Thor would give her details that the history books didn’t have.

Morgan giggled as she swung on Thor’s outstretched arm. She was almost ten now but the god of thunder held her up effortlessly. “You were fat?” She giggled.

“Yes! I was absolutely hug! My belly reached out to here! I was almost as big as the hulk.” Thor said dramatically.

“You were not,” Uncle Bruce said shaking his head with a smile. He carried out almost a dozen large bowls of side dishes in his massive arms, he walked over to the picnic table that was large enough to seat all of the avengers.

“True, but I felt Hulk sized,” Thor pointed out as Morgan dropped from his arms onto the patio deck of the lake house.

“Morgan, go wash your hands, lunch is almost done,” Her mother called as from the kitchen, but just before she ran inside she heard the familiar metal thunk of Iron Man and War Machine landing. “Daddy!” She gasped as she bolted off the porch to hug the sleek red and gold suit of armor.

“Hey there munchkin. You you keep forgetting I can step out now?” Tony said as he stepped out of the armor.

Morgan gasped with excitement as she hugged her father’s legs, “Yeah… but your hugs as so squishy now,” She giggled.

“Yeah, well, guess that happens when you could only hug a suit of armor before, but now that I’m ‘squishy’ I can do this!” He suddenly picked Morgan up and start tickling her neck with kisses.

“Good to see Dr. Cho perfected the cradle, I wanted to ask in person but did the transfer go smoothly?” Bruce asked as he approached Tony.

“Like a charm. The upgrade from AI to android will take some adjusting…” He looked down at Morgan who was hugging him tightly. “But this makes it worth it.”

“Good to see you look human again,” Clint said walking out of the house with a basket full of utensils, Pepper followed just behind him but immediately made her way to Tony. “But I got to admit the blue hologram look was growing on me,” Clint shrugged before ordering his own children to help set the large picnic table.

“Not me, I like this new Tony,” Pepper said as she gave Tony a kiss.

“Yeah you do,” Tony teased as he kissed her.

“Right, enough of that. I’m starving let's go eat!” Rhodey said as he started heading towards the picnic table. He had already gotten out of his suit and with both suits now piloted by FRIDAY, they took off into the air.

The rest of the Avengers soon followed, the Stark family were the last to be seated as they brought out the last of the food. Tony couldn’t stop hugging his family every chance he got.

He never expected to feel them in his arms again.


End file.
